HUMAN SPEECH 67 



evolved from the isolating, and the inflective as the latest and so-called 

 highest type of all. Further study, however, has shown that there is 

 little to support this theory of evolution of types. The Chinese lan- 

 guage, for instance, so far from being typical of a primitive stage, as 

 used to be asserted, has been quite conclusively proven by internal and 

 comparative evidence to be the resultant of a long process of simplifica- 

 tion from an agglutinative type of language. English itself, in its 

 historical affiliations an inflective language, has ceased to be a clear 

 example of the inflective type and may perhaps be said to be an isola- 

 ting language in the making. Nor should we be too hasty in attaching 

 values to the various types and, as is too often done even to-day, look 

 with contempt on the isolating, condescendingly tolerate the agglu- 

 tinative, and vaunt the superiority of the inflective type. A well- 

 developed agglutinative language may display a more logical system 

 than the typically inflective language. And as for myself, I should 

 not find it ridiculous or even paradoxical if one asserted that the most 

 perfect linguistic form, at least from the point of view of logic, had 

 been attained by Chinese, for here we have a language that, with the 

 simplest possible means at its disposal, can express the most technical 

 or philosophical ideas with absolute lack of ambiguity and with ad- 

 mirable conciseness and directness. 



